“What's my destiny, Mama?”
“You're going to have to figure that out for yourself”
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In Forrest Gump, we see two philosophies battling it out.
The belief in a destiny ordained by God,
“We all have a destiny.
Nothing just happens,
it’s all part of a plan.
”
And the idea that you make your own destiny.
“I happen to believe you make your own destiny.”
These are two quintessentially American world views that are,
seemingly, at odds with each other.
“I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around
accidental-like on a breeze.”
On the one hand, this is a deeply religious country,
Even people who don’t explicitly worship are likely to show a kind of religiosity
in their thinking, as embodied in phrases like:
“Everything that’s meant to happen does.”
“Destiny” in particular is a key part of our national consciousness.
19th-century politics were dominated by the idea of “Manifest Destiny,”
Or the faith that this country’s expansion
across the American continent was inevitable and preordained.
At the same time, most Americans believe in hustling
to make something of your life.
This is supposed to be the country where anyone can rise to the top
through sheer will and ingenuity.
That necessitates freedom and an open playing field,
both of which come from a degree of chance.
“Life is like a box of chocolates, Forrest.
You never know what you’re going to get.”
In the end, the movie concludes that most likely our lives include
both divine influence and randomness.
“Maybe it's both.”
And this is embodied in the story’s central symbol:
The feather, which opens the film and delivers us
to our narrator.
This little feather appears to embody the presence of both chance
and the divine.
A feather is just blowing in the wind, and could land anywhere,
but at the end of the film, the feather merges with the clouds
in the sky, as if it’s a little piece of heaven
blessing our lives.
You might say the feather is really opportunity,
whether it comes from chance or from some kind of God,
and that’s why it’s so significant that the feather is invisible
or brushed off by everyone except Forrest.
“Our destiny is only defined by
how we deal with the chance elements to our life.
And that’s kind of the embodiment
of the feather as it comes in.
That here is this thing
that can land anywhere and that it lands at your feet,
it has theological implications that are really huge.”
When it lands at Forrest’s feet, he notices
and presses it into his favorite book for safekeeping.
At the end, he watches it fly away,
as if the feather’s work in his life is now complete.
The title of the book where he houses the feather,
Curious George,
captures the way that Forrest himself is open to whatever shows up.
“How’d you like to go into the shrimping business with me?”
“Okay.”
Most of us, like the other characters in this movie,
have heads full of ideas of how things are supposed to go.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Not to me.”
“I wanna be famous, I wanna be a singer like Joan Baez.”
“I’m going into the shrimping business for myself after I get out of the army.”
And all this noise blinds us to the moment when we’re visited
by the feather, or the opportunity.
So this encapsulates what is really Forrest’s greatest gift of all:
He’s receptive.
“Good catch Gump, you know how to play this?”
He’s present, and he listens to people.
“Just stay a little longer.”
“For some reason Jenny didn’t ever wanna go home.”
“Okay Jenny I’ll stay.”
Something that very few others in this story do.
Pretty much everything he does is a response to something or someone
that appears in his life.
“Have you given any thought to your future?”
Even when he does take an initiative, it’s based on advice from,
“Run Forrest run!”
or a promise to a person he loves,
“But now that he’s dead that means I’ve got to be the captain.”
“A shrimp boat captain?”
“Yes sir, a promise is a promise LT. Dan.”
Or in response to something they’ve done.
In Forrest, we see a portrait of religiosity,
but not in the typical way we tend to think of it.
He eventually becomes a church-going man
because Lieutenant Dan tells him to.
“Maybe you should just pray for shrimp.”
Of course Forrest promptly agrees.
“So I went to church every Sunday.”
Allowing the cynical Dan an excuse to attend himself,
as he secretly feels the need for spirituality in his life.
“Sometimes Lt. Dan came too, though, I think he left then praying up to me.”
During the storm, Lt. Dan then has an intense argument
with his God.
“It’s time for a show down, you and me!”
After which he seems to have achieved the acceptance he’s been craving.
“He never actually said so but I think he made his peace with god.”
Forrest doesn’t have the need to worship or speak
to an anthropomorphic divine entity, the way Lt. Dan conceives of God
as a kind of person outside of us.
“Have you found Jesus yet, Gump?”
“I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.”
He doesn’t need to be looking for God, because he’s already alive
to the mysterious heavenly power that weaves in and out of his life.
“I didn’t know it, but I was destined to be your mama.
I did the best I could.”
“You did good mama.”
He might make us think of Zen Buddhism, which entails emptying the brain
of intellectual ideas that get in the way
of mindfulness.
“There was always a million sparkles on the water.
Like that mountain lake.
It was so clear Jenny,
it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other.”
Near the end, Forrest talks about moments
when he’s felt connected to the presence of heaven on earth.
“I couldn’t tell where heaven started and earth began.”
Because he’s not overfull with hang-ups about how things ought to be,
he’s the rare soul who can perceive the way that the miraculous touches
our lives all the time.
“My Mama always told me that miracles happen every day.
Some people don't think so, but they do.”
Sometimes this is obvious, like when,
soon after Forrest takes Lt. Dan’s advice to resort to prayer,
a hurricane destroys all the other shrimping boats.
“In fact, only one shrimping boat actually survived the storm.”
“Louise.
Louise, there's Forrest.”
“After that, shrimping was easy.”
But seeing miracles can also require a little more imagination
and interpretation.
After young Jenny prays to escape her abusive home life,
“Dear God, make me a bird so that I can fly far,
far away from here.”
God doesn’t give her exactly what she asks for,
but He does seem to answer that prayer.
“Mama always said God is mysterious.
He didn't turn Jenny into a bird
that day.
Instead, He had the police say
Jenny didn't have to stay in that house no more.”
The irony is that as his more goal-oriented friends falter,
receptive Forrest follows through on their dreams.
He becomes the decorated war hero Lt. Dan aspired to be.
“They gave you the Congressional Medal of Honor?”
Lives Jenny’s dream of becoming famous,
“When I got home, I was a national celebrity,
famouser even than Captain Kangaroo.”
And launches the extremely successful shrimping business Bubba planned.
“We got a whole bunch of boats.
Twelve Jennys.
A big ol warehouse, we even have hats that say Bubba-Gump on them.”
Because he’s driven by loyalty to his loved ones,
he’s unstoppable when it comes to making his friends’ dreams come true.
“Hey Bubba, it’s me Forrest Gump.
I remember everything you said,
and I got it all figured out.”
Proving the power of seeking a goal out of love,
versus for self-serving reasons.
“I gave Bubba’s mama, Bubba’s share.
And you know what?
She didn’t have to work in nobody’s kitchen no more.”
Forrest’s openness also wins people over in all kinds of situations,
making them open up to him.
“I remember when that happened, when Wallace got shot.
I was in college.”
So the movie suggests that there’s not only an inherent virtue
but also a recipe for success in Forrest’s approach.
“A few months later, they invited me and the ping pong team
to visit the White House.
So I went.
Again.”
We can learn from Forrest how to make the most of our destinies, too.
Stop being hung up on preconceptions,
“That was my destiny, and you cheated me out of it.”
And instead be ready to receive.
This way, we can both better appreciate
what we already have and more effectively seize on
opportunities that present themselves.
“Hey Forrest, all the shrimp you can eat.”
“That’s a fine idea.”
“Bubba did have a fine idea.”
The second big symbol in the story is the box of chocolates,
which represents chance, and the inherently unfair lottery
we’re all born into.
“My Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you’re going to get.”
As Forrest recounts his life story to whomever happens to sit next to him
on the bench,
another element of randomness, we learn that he didn’t get
the best chocolate out of the box.
“He's going to have to go to a special school.”
“Back’s as crooked as a politician.”
“Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?”
“He’s on vacation.”
Whether the point is to forge your destiny or to find it,
Forrest’s story tells us it’s crucial to make the most
of whatever you’re given.
“You have to do the best with what God gave you.”
And since Forrest does this, he’s rewarded many times over.
“You do your very best now Forrest.”
“I sure will Mama.”
We have so much to say about Forrest Gump,
we decided to make two videos on it.
So, in our next video we’ll be talking about why this is a modern American myth
where Forrest embodies the American spirit
and the other characters each represent different aspects
of our national identity.
So stay tuned for Forrest Gump, the myth of America.
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